I’m writing this later than usual because I’ve been setting up my new iPhone 7. For the last two and a half years I was using a Nexus 5 with Android and liked it quite a bit, I had no real issues with it, other than the kind of shit camera, which is especially annoying when you have a kid. Slow as hell focus, imprecise, so-so image quality.
The OS, the apps, etc. I was quite happy with. All my mainstay apps exist on iOS and Android but a lot of the newer apps start, and sometimes stay, only on iOS which gets to be a pain at a certain point. You have a new job to be done, you look for apps, iOS has some gorgeous ones and Android… not so much. Unless the exact same one exists on both. Which is disappointing because Google’s material visual language can be used beautifully but that rarely happens with “Android born” apps.
The reason I’m back with Apple though has to do with privacy and integration. When I left for Android, I was trying to be less locked in to a stack / silo and I felt (still do) that Android is by default siloed in Google services but lets you turn stuff off and use other services. Apple doesn’t allow as much of that. The other reason was a mix and match of open source, open web and security. Something more webby in a way.
Almost three years later though, Apple is making a big push towards privacy, Android has had multiple security failures, etc. I feel like if I’m going to be tracked by someone, it might as well be Apple, who aims to sell me their hardware, instead of being tracked by Google, who aims to sell me out to advertisers.
Integration. With the most recent versions of their OSes, Apple are finally integrating pocket and laptop computers, with handoff, clipboard, notes, etc. going from one to the other easily. Stuff that for years has felt missing on all platforms, is finally starting to happen and it’s a good nudge for me to switch back.
And finally hardware. There’s just no way to get the Apple hardware quality and polish with a clean Android out of the box. I miss Apple quality hardware.
This post is part of a series of half-baked posts written in 15 minutes.